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'I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life…'

The 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater' is both a classic of the English autobiographical genre and a hard-nosed study of the effects of drugs on an artistic mind. A close associate of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the brilliant but troubled de Quincey recounts both the pleasures and pain of opium addiction in captivating prose. The result is by turns enlightened, nightmarish and witty - a faithful mirror of the drug itself. Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was an English essayist. His most famous work, which was also his first major work, the autobiographical 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater', was published anonymously in the 'London Magazine' in 1821 and first appeared in book form in 1822.